It’s still got game.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Razer’s late-year update to its 13-inch Blade Stealth ultraportable laptop makes it a little smaller, a little lighter and a little more powerful.
Smaller monitor bezels and a bigger touchpad bring the Stealth up to date in both look and feel, and allow Razer to shrink the laptop’s footprint. The keyboard now uses rubber dome switches, and no longer offers per-key RGB lighting, only a single zone. Razer steps up the stealthiness by toning down the glowing green three-headed snake logo, instead sticking with an unobtrusive basic black that won’t stand out in meetings.
Watch this: Razer Blade Stealth sneaks in an end-of-year update
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The new Blade Stealth comes in three configurations, starting at $1,399 (£1,300), all of which use a quad-core Intel i7-8565U processor. The base model has 8GB RAM, a 256GB SSD, a 1,920×1,080-pixel full HD display and integrated graphics.
The middle model adds a discrete Nvidia MX150 GPU and ups to 16GB RAM, while the top configuration incorporates a 4K touchscreen and increases storage to 512GB.
A more subtle snake.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Both displays are factory calibrated to 100 percent sRGB, and the Blade Stealth uses the higher power version of the MX150 with 4GB VRAM. An updated version of Razer’s Synapse software works with Nvidia’s Optimus technology to provide control over performance, and in turn, fan noise.
Razer claims 13 hours of battery life, a little better than before thanks to lower-power display panels.
It does preserve its portitude relative to other ultraportables, with two USB-A ports and two USB-C connections, one of which supports Thunderbolt. You’ll still need to dongle it for HDMI and Ethernet, which dulls the luster a tiny bit for business use.